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  • Mistakes That Clients Make in Keyword Selection–Part I

    Google is gradually becoming more ruthless in weeding out all the negative elements in the SEO industry by making its algorithms more content based. However, while this is of great help to the end user and each and every professional article writing service, it has also made the whole process of SEO more intensive. Take for example the aspect of keyword selection. One of the biggest problems that we have noted with our clients is with their selection of keywords.

    The choice of keywords is one of the most crucial aspects of any SEO campaign and regardless of whether you have a high quality article writing services or the best article writing service, if your keyword selection is unsatisfactory then it would not be as successful as it can be. Here is a list of all the keyword mistakes that people make.

    1. Small fish, big pond or big fish, small pond:
      Most of our clients have this philosophy of aiming for keywords that are already seeing a lot of demand from services or product providers. This translates into the small fish, big pond syndrome. It is not really a good place to be because unless you are devoting a lot of resources i.e. using the best article writing service and posting, at least, ten articles daily, the big fish will swallow the small fish i.e. you.

      If your resources are limited then you are better off aiming for keywords that do not have a lot of competition and can be optimized easily. Being the big fish in a small pond is better because you will get more conversions.

    2. Competition and its strengths:
      If there is a shark in your waters and you are a lowly individual piranha then you cannot expect to compete with it. However, if you do not analyze the shark and its strengths then you can just as easily keep going for the same target audience and failing each and every time. The idea is to know what you are up against when it comes to a single keyword.

      Once you have selected the keyword, you should check which of your competitors are using it and evaluate their capabilities and strength. You should look at their size, the kind of back links they have already created and even the high quality article writing service that they are using. For example, if you are a new company and your competitors have been in the market for some time, then you cannot realistically hope to compete with them.

    3. Dive deep for the best morsels:
      Keeping with the fish terminology, the deeper you dive the better food you will find. What this means is that your keyword selection needs to be extremely extensive and focused. The deeper you research into your keywords and the more specific you are with your selection, the better your results will be, once you get a professional article writing service to use it for you.

      A simple example of this would be the comparison between computers, personal computers and P4 personal computers. As you have already surmised, long tail is better than single word keywords because you will target better audience this way.

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  • Writing for NGOs: Socially Responsible Content Writing

    NGOs or Non-Governmental Organisations provide important services with very little or no profit for themselves. These organisations complement the work done by the government with little or no profit of their own. While a part of their work may be funded by the government, most of the time, NGOs rely on donations and grants to be able to work effectively. This funding used to be the responsibility of the fund-raising officer, but now, with the age of the internet, the website of the NGO also plays a big role in this.

    The NGO website content is very important in creating an awareness of the work that they do, and this in turn becomes very important in getting more and more people interested in it. For any NGO, content of its website can mean the difference between enough finances and not-enough finances. How, you ask? Well, since the funding for such charity websites is driven by the generosity of the people who believe in the NGO’s cause, the NGO website content needs to act as the advocate for the NGO’s cause.

    A person who visits the site should have the NGO and what it does explained in a succinct manner, and should also elaborate how the reader can assist in it. Moreover, having SEO optimised content on the website will also bring in more visitors to the site. This way, even people who are not aware of the NGO can find it, and thus become potential donors.

    The Wordsmanship, as a company, understands the importance of the work done by the NGOs of India. This is why, when working for an NGO, SEO content writing becomes such an honour for us. As a part of the social responsibility we feel towards the society, The Wordsmanship offers highly competitive, ‘just-for-NGOs’ rates and assure very high quality, SEO-optimised content.

    With our service quality and the special offer for NGOs, we hope to become the NGO SEO content writing company of India. This way, not only do we hope to do our bit socially, but also contribute to the organisations that strive to make a better India.

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  • Content Trapping: The Road to Web Dorado

    When it comes to strategies for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there is little place for the adjective ‘best’. With SEO strategies (especially for web content writing), there are right strategies and better ones. While there are a myriad of SEO strategies, the right strategy is the one that actually works for you and a better one is what can propel your business from its current standing to having greater traffic and expanded business.

    Content Trap is one such strategy which if done right can help your boost your traffic in a short period of time. It is described as a system comprising of content based manipulative link building tactics (whatever that means). But a heads up though, in spite of a big pay-off, anyone who employs this method will come to know that it’s a demanding and laborious process. I will try to break it down for you into simple, comprehensible steps.

    Identifying Low-competition Key-words that will lead straight to your site

    Identify at least ten long-tail keywords related to your site. The length of these key-words may stretch to around 3-6 words. You can use tools like Google Ad-keywords or Traffic Travis to identify these key-words. A certain variety in the key-words will increase the scope for your pages to gain visibility. This will also be useful when you get to the last step of the process. The idea of getting moderately competitive key-words for your site will get search engines to lead them straight to your page. This way, any search related to such key-words will directly channel the targeted audience to your page. Thus your site will feature at the higher end of the page ranking to such a search.

    Prioritise your Key-words and configure your Top pages accordingly

    Key-words with greater degree of search should figure higher up your list. Configuring your pages to feature the given key-word more prominently will elevate your standing in the search results. This step would entail; including the key-words in the URL, anchor text as well as the body of content. Stick to an appropriate key-word density (say, 1-2%) so that it doesn’t seem like the key-words have been stuffed in the page superfluously. The refined search criterion of search engines absolutely abhors such tactics.

    Generating adequate links for the Key-words

    Once the site has been configured for optimized visibility during searches, it is important that the site generates enough do-follow links for the selected key-words. This can mostly be in the form of Do-follow anchor text-links. The site moderators can try posting the links on blog comments (which permit such links) or spread them through Guest Blogs at popular sites (if they have any). Submitting your links to reliable feed directories will result in high quality back-links.

    Submitting articles based on each Key-word.

    While the above steps were meticulous in nature, this step is just plain back breaking drudgery.  There also lies a conundrum with this step. If you have a series of key-words that are closely similar to each other, you may dispose of this task early and attain a quick spike in your traffic but will end up recycling the same material thereby diluting the quality of the content and needless to say attenuating the linkability of the pages. On the other hand, having eclectic key-words will take up your time in writing the articles but will ensure a wide variety of content (all related to the same subject of course). The latter method in spite of the slow start is bound to ensure return visits and garnering a stable traffic. Thereafter, all you need to do is submit these articles to popular article directories for syndication and in a short period you will notice a gradual rise in your page traffic as well as page rankings.

    Do remember to stick to the tips of capitalizing on traffic spikes and maintaining a stable traffic.

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  • The Quest for Consistent Growth in Traffic

    Generating internet traffic and achieving a consistent growth in it is the primary objective of most web-based business services, namely online content writing services and SEO content services. Attaining a stable traffic is how websites generate leads to their businesses. The more traffic the website generates, the more it expands in its business be it the sale of products and services or the simple propagation of ideas and ideologies.

    While websites use many methods to amplify their traffic, the site can attain sustained growth only through return visits and by gaining the loyalty of the audience who explore the contents the site has to offer. The given list of measures might shed some light on the secrets behind maintaining a stable traffic.

    Consistent delivery of high quality content

    While it’s not really a secret, but constantly generating content highly worth linking is a strategy which apart from being a principle is the most assured form of improving a site’s reputation and popularity. What more, you might also attract a generic audience apart from the loyal base of niche audience that you were originally targeting. The ability of the content to attract an audience would be deeply affected by the;

    – Amount of information available on the topic

    – The design of the site

    – The tone and approach of the writer while dispensing the information (which may vary according to the gravity of the subject, though our staff while staying loyal to being objective does believe in the saying ‘Leave ‘em laughing’).

    Networking with other bloggers and affluent people in your target niche

    The approval and endorsement of notable peers can have a marked effect on the loyalty of the audience. Linking out to the popular and affluent netizens in your own sphere will increase your visibility amongst the niche. Notifying as well as attracting other well known web personalities will help raise the activity and prominence of the site. Reaching out to bloggers by staying active on their blog with relevant and intelligent comments (added emphasis on Intelligent) will help you make them explore your own content. This can also help you forge a relationship with them and eventually may lead to them to endorsing and linking your page. As good bedside manners, it helps to thank the sites that have contributed in raising your traffic and even return the favour sometime.

    Identifying popular pages and increasing their linking
    One should constantly monitor the popularity of the site and keep a tab on which pages are high up in the page rankings in the keyword search and improve the internal links leading to the pages. Staying active on the forums available in the page and improving the content will also raise the prominence of the as well as increasing the activity on the page.

    Most websites tend to market their homepage more than the high utility pages but owners should focus more on the pages with greater linkability. Setting up support pages can be another added measure to channel links to the popular content in your site.

    Constantly updating your site

    While the above steps may encourage audiences to make a second visit to your page, only new content that is worth their while will assure a repeated visit. The moderators should keep themselves active on the forums of their page so as to keep the existing crowd active on your page.

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  • Content farms: An obituary

    It started with Google’s Caffeine and the Mayday programs and then in 2011, Google Panda stomped its way to hammering the last nails on the coffin. Content farms masquerading as efficient databases with the help of the vacuous art of Article Spinning are meeting a steep fall from grace in their SERP rankings as search engines (Not only Google) wised up to their rank hogging tricks.

    There used to be a time when websites simply used to stuff their domains with a more than adequate amount of key words. This was the time when search engines conducted linear searches to yield a search result which was arranged as per its popularity and certain relevance irrespective of the nature and quality of the content as compared to each other. And that’s about all that search engines used to do. Such a system was not hard to get around. The methods were labour intensive but it yielded efficient results. Websites at that time were well capable of outsmarting the fledgling Search engines of yesteryear which were yet to become the industrious content quality predators that they are now.

    This was usually done by hiring a vast hoard of content writers who would replicate the content originally produced and thus not only expand the size of the website but also help the website don a property of seeming to have a vast reserve of data on a subject. This also helped in getting more clicks and visits since one article would simply lead to another. Besides, by having a plethora of articles similar in structure, there was a chance that at least one page would procure vast traffic and in turn simply lead the readers to explore other articles present in the domain. Of course, considering it’s the internet, few methods steadily stand the test of time and Article spinning became just one of the few tricks to cultivating what became infamously termed as “Content Farms”, a breed of websites which industriously produced an assembly line of articles which were notoriously similar in content.

    While Search engines steadily trod the path to discovering how the worth of a page can be gauged aside from the familiar and outdated criteria of popularity, dotcom intelligentsia everywhere invented new and evolved tricks of Search Engine Optimization. They found radical new ways to set-up content farms as well as earning a steady wage from them. Yes, there were sites that supplied reliable and original content, but these content farms prospered as well. Until now that is.

    Many must be acquainted with the news of drop in the SERP and traffic of 12% of all sites since the launch of the Google Panda algorithm (a majority of which were E-Commerce sites). Considering the formation of 4.5 mn URL’s every month (as measured in 2011) as well as taking into account the billion pages already in existence, an unfathomable number of sites have been affected and the rest 88% are just surviving, I’m guessing. Although one has to concede that the truly productive sites must have had a hyperbolic spike in their traffic.

    While the Panda has rendered nothing short of a sucker punch, I’m supremely confident (in it’s obviousness) that the Search engine gods are yet to unleash their Kraken. Google being the sovereign of Search engines will lead the witch hunt for Content farms, and websites will have no other options but to elevate the quality and variety of content unless they want to be weeded out by yet another monstrosity of a rolling update in its algorithm that Google unleashes every other month on the web-world.

    Content Farms aren’t dead yet, but their condition is nothing if not terminal.

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  • Google Panda; Scourge of the SEO world

    It was inevitable and had to come to this sooner or later. While it’s a cliché that necessity is the mother of invention, Clichés are clichés for a reason. As bloggers and web based businesses vamped up their domains for greater SERP’s with extensive link-building tactics, search engines had to come up with programs that would meticulously judge the inherent worth of the content and provide a comparatively coherent search result as opposed to previous search criterions which ranked highly marketed sites way up above the sites providing worthy content.

    It is an unsaid convention that if Google doesn’t notice you, chances are no one else will either. Calling a spade a spade, Google is the demi-god amongst search engines and other search engines (even the highly efficient ones like Alexa or Technorati) have but a fraction of the same traffic that Google boasts of. And Google being the ocean of innovation that it is, came up with Google Panda. Readers who are yet to discover the weight of phenomenon that is Google Panda can concur from the first paragraph that it has something to do with the providing a content heavy search result and downgrade advertisement sites in the page rankings.

    To the technical cognoscenti, it’s a search algorithm added to the list of search criterion that Google already has and will filter content based on the worth of the data provided. (Just out of sheer curiosity; why did Google decide to christen an upgrade and spread the word around? Marketing, perhaps?).

    Months after its release, a string of rolling updates (Version 2.3 was recently unveiled) followed, thereby notching up its efficiency. The saving grace maybe that the updates have be conformed to take into account the popularity of the site as well as the audiences feed signals.

    This turns around the rules of SEO quite significantly (which will also be discussed later in subsequent blog entries). Plain link-building just doesn’t suffice anymore. It is now essential that the site has some worthy and significant content to boast of (not just mass-text, but also quality content). While the existing techniques for SEO may still apply, the emphasis on the content heavy pages with extensive data on the given subject will increase the value of the domain and this is what radically alters the traffic pattern. This was well exhibited by the drop in traffic in-flux of almost 12 percent of all sites.

    This will give an edge to Web-content writing services and other content providing business setups. But the update does have specific targets and instantly downgrades low-quality websites and reduces spams (which is called for, considering the generation of 4.5 mn URL’s per month in 2011). But, taking note of the 12 percent which has been affected, it will be easy to find a lot of sites affected by the update. I’m sure one can also notice certain homogeneity in such sites.

    My guess is that most of the “12 percent” will mostly consist of sites with poor usability and structure as well as sites which are designed specifically for advertising and have poor product pages. I don’t believe one need mention that most of these sites will have uniformly low quality content, in which case it was just a matter of time until they got depreciated in their rankings.

    For the rest, it is essential that they elevate the worth of their content unless they be relegated to SERP purgatory. Ye be warned, This Panda has claws!

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  • Scouring for Good Back-links

    While there may not be a definitive process to get good back-links (making them all the more difficult to find) which will significantly raise the popularity and prominence of your page in the search results, there are a few steps that one can follow to ensure that your posts catch the attention of the right kind of audience. Such back-links will up the traffic and page ranking of the site as well encourage further linking thereby increasing the number of back-links to your page. Such back-links in addition to targeting a generic audience will catch the fancy the niche audience that your website specifically caters to. Most of the following tips can help you find as well as determine which all sites you can devote your time for efficient link building and extension of your network.

    Before one figures out how to get worthy back-links, one has to know where to find them. The easiest way would be to search for sites popular amongst the same kind of audience that you are seeking to attract. You can conduct this search in your standard search engines itself.  This way, you can also find the various avenues your competitors in the field are active in. Employing Do-follow search engines to find your niche audience can also be helpful.

    Keeping a tab on your competition and constantly monitoring their moves will yield ideas about where you can get your links from. Tools like the ones provided by Google  can be of great assistance in this process. Another trick which might pay off suitably would be to try getting links from your competitor’s external links.

    After finding such links, it is also crucial to judge the worth of these pages and posts. You would not want go through all this work just to get pages with mediocre content. The popularity of the page is important when it comes to linking and its page rank should at the very least be north of four, especially with the keyword search. The site should also constantly keep updating itself at regular intervals. This is irrespective of how highly the page is ranked. If the content is more than three or four months old, it loses its relevance significantly and may not guarantee the same level of exposure you desire get from the link.

    The number of external links given in the page will also determine the value of the link. Any page which might contain more than 25 or 30 external links is not worth getting linked to. In-content links on the other hand bring in a lot more traffic and reach out to the audience you are looking for much more easily.

    One can also check whether the linking pages and blogs permit do-follow attribute links on their comment section. If they don’t, then one can try guest blog posting or try getting linked to the page as a resource (predicated on whether your content has a lot more information on the subject than the linking page).

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  • The science of “Good” Back-links

    The general attitude towards Backlinks usually rests its base on the number you can procure for your site, irrespective of where it is linked. But it is hard to find good backlinks which would expose your site to a vast audience or at the very least garner the attention of the niche audience that your site primarily caters to. This would be beyond getting linked at popular sites (though it is one of the many ways) since they might spike your traffic and page rank for a certain while but might not guarantee a consistent audience or increase the number of regular visits to your page.

    What makes for a good back-link, to begin with? The foremost criteria maybe the relevance of the content used with the linking page’s main content. This as mentioned above will rightly catch the attention of the niche audience that you were targeting. This is further affected by the Anchor-text used for your content.  The inverse of this is equally important. The page-title and information available at the linking page should be relevant to the destination of the back-link. It always helps to have the particular key-words and specific jargons in the anchor text, not mention making it catchy yet appropriate to the content. The timely relevance of the link as well as the page adds greater value to the link (assuming the content is relevant for the given time). This would also ensure that the content available is updated in its information.

    The popularity as well as the authority of the linking domain is an important factor and it always helps if the page rank of the linking page is above four. This may not always assure a steady flow of traffic but does have a certain chance that it might get through to the audience you are originally targeting. Getting linked at popular sites will generate significantly larger back-links (ergo, a good back-link) and again get through to an audience which has a steady interest in the content you provide. On the downside though, getting linked at popular sites would mean having your link crammed between a vast lists of references and competing with similar content providers.

    The placement of your link within the content of the page plays an especially essential part in determining how valuable the link is. It should preferably be within the body copy. This way the link seems to be of greater relevance and is quickly noticed by the reader. The link will feature more prominently if it is displayed in a page which has less than 25 external links. Again, the quality and length of the Anchor text is significant when it comes to getting linked. The Anchor text should meet the keyword density in the page (40% and 1-2% for the title and body, respectively)

    While the probability of coming across pages that would conform to all these criteria are rather miniscule, we can assure you that finding pages which would meet most of these criteria will significantly boost your traffic as well as your page ranking and is exactly what one seeks in a good back-link.

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  • Link Building through worthy Back-links

    The arduous process of Link-building is significantly alleviated if one can find back-links which are more productive in nature and will directly channel your content towards the audience which you are looking for and help you bring in increased and consistent traffic.

    The process of getting high quality back-links is not that different from the concept of Link-baiting. The difference being that the former is not a process per se but involves a number of steps. Another difference is that there is a larger focus on the page you wish to get linked at.

    One may begin by engaging in Blog commenting especially in blogs which permit do-follow links. There is an inherent complexity to this step. The quality of your comment should always precede the frequency with which you are commenting.  Your comments should always contribute something valuable and relevant to the topic, and not to mention it should also be compelling to read. This will not only make the blogger aware of your presence but also increase the value of your links. In many target blogs, the top commentators usually gain links from the site’s active pages. It is advisable that you never engage in spamming and refrain from overtly fawning the blogger about the content of the blog (The page ranking of the blog as well as your frequent commenting display your appreciation for the blogger’s work enough). This would help you in befriending the page owner and better your chance of extending your network.

    You can also contact the site manager and request a guest blog post. You have to make sure that the content of the blog is relevant to both the sites. You can also contribute topics which you the feel the other site has left out. Guest blogs give scope to attain the best form on links that there are i.e. In-content links (since they have greater relevance). Guest blog posts work well to benefit both the parties and help well to forge a wonderful collaboration. If the blog administrator doesn’t permit a guest blog then you can always try requesting them to link you and come up with an agreement which may help both the site’s to thrive.

    There is also the option of bargaining for Links. This can be considered a Hail-mary-pass if you will, in case the other options fail. You can try offering an article exchange which will have relevant links for both sites. Refrain from purchasing links and stick to bartering them since search engines usually depreciate the page ranking of purchased links.

    The other way to get in-content links would be to submit your content to reliable article submission sites. The success of this move is predicated upon the quality of the content. This will provide an extensive dissemination of your content and generate quality back-links and more importantly, in-content back-links. Paid article services can get you the same and will be automatically be picked up by numerous other sites with your original link intact.

    Link building being the cumbersome process that it is can be greatly helped by these many steps and can provide a sustainable way of Search Engine Optimization.

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  • Link Baiting: How the Pro’s do it

    In the world of Search Engine optimization, there is such a thing as working hard and working smart. The dichotomy between the two is what gives the professionals an edge over their less accomplished counterparts. Professionals somehow manage to get high-quality back-links as well as in-content links. Ordinarily, this will mostly involve an arduous sequence of guest blog postings which as you understand from the adjective ‘arduous’ will chew through a great amount of your time. This is where the concept of Link baiting comes to significance.

    Link Baiting, by definition means posting within a website any content or feature which is specifically designed to encourage readers to link the website. Though the process itself may sound simple, its implementation can hardly be described as anything but. But it does help in saving time and work.
    The first step to Link baiting can described as being more as a principle than a step per se. Link bating calls for delivering exceptionally good content (a quality we, at The WordsManShip, constantly lay emphasis on). Any content that is posted on the site has to be seen by a reader as valuable and replete with all the pertinent data related to the topic. While attempting to write such articles, many tend to overload on information but care has to be taken the content should also make for a compelling read as well as having just the right amount of data.

    A simple trick to Link Building through this process is to have your readers do your SEO for you. Of course, for this to work the regulators of the site should make sure that it is absolutely simple for a reader to share and link your posts. One can mention at the start or end of the post that the reader can share it through social networks and media. One can also make social widgets available for the readers at the site. This way one gains more in-content back-links.

    Of course the experts’ strategy to Link baiting involves a network of fellow ‘experts’ forged over a period of time. Winning over already established bloggers and people of considerable web-repute will help you gain your own standing in the web world and needless to say significantly raise your traffic as well as help you gain your own following (all this, taken that your content is impressive enough to facilitate such a transition). Establishing such a network, naturally, takes time. One has to begin with getting to know these “experts” by introducing yourself to them online and commenting on their blog posts. You have to make sure that they are aware of you following them. It’s only a matter of time that in due course your appreciation will be reciprocated with a re-tweet or sharing of your content in their social networks.

    Consistent quality in one’s content may be what ensures that you get enough traffic and a respectable Page ranking in search results but a strategic dissemination of your content is what the SEO is all about and Link Baiting as a strategy may not only save time in getting your content out there but may also be a more efficient method for SEO.

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